


I was a teenage disaster

by Greenisher



Series: The rewards of being loved [2]
Category: The Owl House (Cartoon)
Genre: Bisexual Disaster Luz Noceda, F/F, Gay Disaster Amity Blight, Touch-Starved Amity Blight, Useless Lesbian Amity Blight
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-21
Updated: 2021-01-21
Packaged: 2021-03-13 12:16:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,572
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28903260
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Greenisher/pseuds/Greenisher
Summary: "She closed her eyes and breathed out, only to feel nerves clamp over her chest as Luz lay next to her. "What are you doing?""Chilling with you," Luz, lying on her side, propped up on a hand, gave her what had been previously described as 'finger guns'. "So you don't feel weird about chilling alone.""Oh wow," she said, stomach flipping. "Chilling. Together. Oh wow." She laughed sharply, snorted, covered her face, and groaned. "This is nice, but maybe you should focus on me." Wait! No! "On my notes! Focus on my notes!""AKAAmity discovers that studying alone with your (kind of maybe) girlfriend in a safe space is a luxury when your parents aren't great. If only the twins weren't determined to embarrass her...
Relationships: Amity Blight/Luz Noceda
Series: The rewards of being loved [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2119710
Comments: 12
Kudos: 308





	I was a teenage disaster

**Author's Note:**

> I just love writing Gay Disaster Amity Blight.

Usually Amity was more engaged in class, even when sitting next to her kind-of-maybe-it's-complicated-girlfriend. Despite how much she loved watching the light from a classroom window shine through Luz's hair, despite how even the most gentle brushing of her hand over Luz's made her stomach flip, she still managed to keep most of her attention on the material being covered. She could hardly call herself top student, otherwise. 

Today, however, as the teacher explained the general structure and summoning of an abomination and Luz struggled to keep up, Amity felt her attention drift. She knew this subject inside and out, and she was tired. Last night had been yet another night spent tossing and turning, and a lack of sleep was starting to get to her. Whenever she tried to name the emotion, her brain forced it away.

"--As you know, abomination goo is made up of several elements--" the teacher was saying, a voice coming through from a distant land as she gazed out of the window.

"Psst," Luz was saying, bringing her back. "Psst. Why  _ are _ abominations all gooey?"

"Oh, a range of reasons," Amity started. "We learned about them last year. It's a whole other class."

Luz looked at her, eyes wide, bottom lip sticking out.

"I can find my notes," Amity suggested, with a smile. "So you can catch up."

" _ Thank you!" _ Luz whispered with a grin. "Magic school is so hard when you kinda only started learning a month ago…" Under the table, her foot gently curled around Amity's. Amity went pink, and focused on staring very hard on her paper. "Wanna meet at your secret hideout after school to study?"

Amity had never hoped so hard that a study session wouldn't actually involve studying. Or...ever hoped that a study session wouldn't involve studying. She'd felt so weird these past few days. Time with Luz...that would help. Right?

They split up after the class with Luz promising to get snacks to make up for getting Amity's notes. The Blight house was empty when Amity slipped into it, but she still moved swiftly and carefully. Any moment now, one of her parents might get back from work, and then the  _ Conversation _ they'd been having over and over lately would continue. And that wasn't something she wanted to happen; the talks they'd been holding - loud, uncompromising, furious - had created a strange feeling deep inside her, one that she was having trouble identifying. Every time she got close to thinking of them, of the way they were making her feel, she felt like shaking, her chest grew tight, her breathing rushed. It felt like she was facing down something scary. Really scary. Not as scary as Grom (because there was only  _ one thing _ scarier than her parents and that  _ one thing _ was the reason why she'd refused to do what they'd asked) but still, scary.

Super scary.

She made it to the library unscathed, with several notebooks under her arm in her neat script. Notes on Abominations, but also older stuff she'd found from earlier years. Runes, Runic History. Stuff she thought Luz would like. Waited by the adult romance shelves until nobody was in front of them, and then took out the copy of The Lone Witch and the Secret Room, and slipped into her hideout. 

Luz had been decorating it with human stuff that Eda brought out in her trash hauls. These additions made her smile more than anything else, sweet little mementoes of her human. A pile of beanbags, more cushions. A poster on the wall of the first Witch Queen Azura movie. She didn't feel like a lone witch so much anymore. This had gone from  _ her _ secret hideaway to  _ theirs _ . Dropping the selection of notes from last school year, she picked up one of the human books Luz had left (they were in a different language, and Amity was trying to puzzle out what each word meant) and sat down on one of the beanbags.

Luz came in a few minutes later with a wide smile, holding a bag with a range of snacks inside. "Hey!"

Amity shut the book, feeling almost guilty, and slid it back onto the table. "Hey!" She managed, trying to look cool but mostly failing. "I brought my notes!"

"You're amazing," Luz breathed, picking them up, scanning through them already. 

"What! Noooo. You're amazing."

"Willow gave me hers too, but these are so detailed! And your handwriting is _so_ neat! Can I copy these?" 

Luz looked so excited that Amity couldn't have said 'no' if she'd wanted to. "Sure," she said, and then, because she didn't want to go without Luz's attention for that long, "But let's do our homework for today first. I'll help fill in anything you don't understand."

"Yes!" Luz pumped the air. "Studying with the smartest student in the school! I can't lose!"

Rather than pull out the chair from the desk, Amity sat next to her, and beamed when Luz slipped an arm around her shoulders. "Okay," she began. "So here, in question one, when he's asking what Abominations are made of…"

"Oh! I know! Goo!"

"Kind of…" 

The sound of people browsing quietly outside. The way Luz's arm felt so warm over her shoulders. The gentle sigh whenever Luz missed something important. These things all felt good. Amity half closed her eyes, leaning into the warm body beside her, enjoying them too much. Luz's fingers found her hair, stroked it gently. "Are you okay?"

"What?" Amity looked up, startled. She'd been half-way through trying to solve a problem before Luz so she could help her with it.

"You don't seem okay."

"I'm fine!"

"Really?" Luz frowned. "You seemed kinda…forlorn, you know?"

"Forlorn?" Amity asked. "Oh…" Forlorn. That was the word for how she felt. She felt tired and forlorn. And now she'd discovered it, let the adjective define the feeling way down in the pit of her stomach, she felt it hit her in a sudden wave. Forlorn. Alone. Small, tired, lost. "I didn't mean to be."

"I'm sorry," Luz's fingers on her scalp, tingling through her. She got touched so rarely that Luz's strokes, hugs, kisses, all of them seemed to wake up explosions under her skin. "You seem so sad and tired lately. Can I do anything for you?"

Sad. Forlorn. Tired. Scared too, but she hadn't told Luz about that. She looked down at their work, their different styles of handwriting. What did she want? What might help? "Can I…Can we..." she awkwardly moved her arms a little out from her body. "The parallel arms thing?"

"Of course!" Luz sprang into her arms, and Amity felt the comforting presence of a soft, warm body next to her own. She rested her forehead against Luz's shoulder, eyes closing tight. Finally, that dark cloud felt as though it were shifting.

Human magic. Definitely. She felt her cheeks flush as Luz rubbed her back. Human magic. She turned, wanting to surprise Luz with a kiss, and managing it. There was always a look of amazement, happiness, on her  _ kinda-sorta _ -girlfriend's face whenever Amity kissed her still. That was a sure-fire way to bring a spark of happiness into her chest, bouncing around her heart and bile sack, thrumming under her ribs. "What if…" she ventured, "we don't finish the rest of the homework. And we just stay like this all evening?"

"We gotta do the homework!" Her human was staring at her wide-eyed, before adding suspiciously: "Who are you, and what did you do with Amity?"

"I'm still Amity!" She insisted. "I just…" how did she put this? She couldn't concentrate on work. All she wanted was to be held. To have Luz stroke her back. To just exist in this moment with her head on her maybe-kinda-girlfriend's shoulder. "I'm tired. I just want the arm thing."

Her human tipped her sideways, so that they landed on one of the piles of beanbags. There were enough here that they could make another human nest. That was a nice thought. She made a little noise, heart fluttering, nose buried into the warm skin of her human's neck. But then Luz was letting go, and that wasn't great. She reached up, trying to keep them together. "I'll be back!" Luz promised. "Let me finish this page, okay? And then we can hug for as long as you want. I can't fail this class."

"You won't fail!" Amity was dangerously close to pouting exasperatedly, but she settled down in the beanbag pile, arms folding, bottom lip sticking out, and stared at the back of Luz's beautiful grown out pixie cut as her human leaned in to start working again. She closed her eyes, feeling suddenly weird about taking so much joy from watching the back of someone's head, the sweetness of her neck, her little purple hood, her slender shoulders. But in her head all she could think of was Luz.

At some point, Luz reached back and lay a gentle hand on her ankle. It was soft, and it was warm, and it was reassuring. Amity half opened her eyes, looking at Luz through her eyelashes. The human had switched the hands she was holding her pen with so that she could reach back and hold her, but remained where she was, finishing her homework, going through Amity's old class notes. 

She'd expected her heart rate to speed up, figuring it would be the same as  _ every other time _ when she got all breathless and nervous and even anxious about Luz's proximity to her. But instead she just felt a calm overtake her. A sense of being protected. Feeling safe was something alien to her. But she liked this. It felt good, sort of light, to be able to close her eyes and feel completely unjudged. She gazed up at the back of Luz's head, her own hand moving to come to a rest on her forehead. How was she able to completely right Amity's sinking ship with just a touch of her fingers? 

Magic. Some kind of human magic. Probably. Humans didn't do traditional magic, but Luz had tapped into some ancient techniques... maybe she had some other sort of magic about her? She examined Luz's body, trying to see where any spells were coming from, and couldn't. Instead she mostly felt a tingle inside, the flipping of her stomach as she saw the way Luz's hair caught the light or how easily she absorbed information. She was smart. She really was  _ smart _ . She was impulsive and did things rashly, but Amity found that exciting more than dumb. Once Luz got into trouble she was  _ so _ good at thinking her way out of it. Trying to stay quiet, Amity sat up and gazed at the body of the girl in front of her. Briefly she was lost in a warm sensation. 

Luz had told her that she could hug her, but it wasn't something she initiated often. It felt so...  _ intimate _ . Close in a way that she still didn't quite understand. Something shaky and anxious kicked off inside her whenever she tried to initiate, despite how nice they felt when Luz started them off. When she tried to be affectionate without prompting she felt all vulnerable and raw, flinching and fearful. Luz, in comparison, was brave and confident, dealing out hugs and kisses with ease. Amity bit her bottom lip, a prickling in her stomach. And then slid her arms around Luz's body from behind.

Her cheek landed on Luz's shoulder. Her breath tickled the back of Luz's neck. Luz's hand stayed on her ankle, but she hummed happily as Amity looked over what she was doing. Copying her notes from last year on a history of runes. So she'd noticed those! And they  _ were _ useful to her! Cool, cool, cool…

She buried her face into Luz's hair. She smelled good. She always did, but today her hair was especially fluffy and nice smelling, a perfect place to press her nose into. Amity Blight did not  _ snuggle _ or  _ nuzzle _ , she just, you know, made movements a lot like them but with more dignity. Luz's hand moved from around her ankle. It moved upwards, finding Amity's hand, and sliding into it. "Let me finish copying down this," Luz said. "And I'll be right there." Luz had tried nicknames, but nothing worked so well as calling Amity by name. Her name sounded different in the mouths of different people. Her parents made it sound like a reproach. Her teachers, a dutiful call to action. Lilith calling her name brought up the bubbling anger of tricking her into cheating in front of the entire witch's convention. But Luz…

Luz made it sound like the sweetest thing in the world.

She squeezed the hand she already had and watched over Luz's shoulder impatiently. The moment Luz's pen connected the circle of the rune she reached for that hand too, holding both. Luz leaned back into her and let out a sigh and Amity felt set adrift. It felt amazing to be next to her, to be holding her. To be alone with her, even as the rest of the library continued on outside their door. 

Amity was lost in thoughts of romance, with adjectives like  _ lucky _ or  _ beautiful _ or even  _ beloved _ running through her brain. Luz, in front of her, was leaning back to look at her face, thinking of something else. "When you were dragging me out of that abomination pot to ask what I was, did you ever think you'd be kissing my face a couple weeks later?"

Amity's brain ground to a halt. " _ What _ ?"

"You know. When we first met."

"Oh,  _ absolutely _ not."

"Not even a little?" Luz twisted to make a kissy face at her and Amity pressed her hand in the way. "Even when you went feral and jumped over a table?"

"I did  _ not _ go feral!" She was getting red faced again. Her sort-of-kind-of-girlfriend turned in her arms and laughed, and Amity felt herself smile accidentally. "...Maybe a little."

Luz was facing her, gently pushing her back down into the beanbag. She let her, laying back, reaching up to touch her maybe-a-little-girlfriend's ears, her fingers running through her hair. "Do you still feel tired?"

"What?"

"You know. Earlier you said you were having trouble focusing on homework, cuz you're tired."

"Oh." Right. "But I got it all done!"

"Right!" Luz kissed her on the forehead and that was so tender that her entire body tensed, face going hot, eyes wide. "But I still need some time. So why don't you lie down? You can nap, or chill. I'll still be here."

Amity considered this. The last time she'd taken a nap, she and Willow had still been best friends. Being a Blight high achiever meant putting aside such things. Unless… "For real?" She blurted out.

"Yeah!"

"You'll still be here?" How was it possible that she could go even redder?

"Of course!" Luz grinned at her. "I'm not going to leave you!"

That made her entire heart feel overly full. She could feel it and her bile sack both working overtime, pulsing away deep inside. It felt as though she could do incredible feats of magic to see that smile. Luz cocked her head to the side, and was so unbearably adorable that Amity found herself laying back, eyes on the ceiling, face burning. "Okay...okay then. I'll just...I'll take a break and  _ 'chill' _ down here."

"There you go!" Luz kissed her cheek and said, "Wow, you are just burning up! Good thing you're resting."

"Good...good thing." Maybe it was best if Luz thought she was sick. A better alternative to Luz realising that occasionally she was completely overcome by her own gayness. She closed her eyes and breathed out, only to feel nerves clamp over her chest as Luz lay next to her. "What are you doing?"

"Chilling with you," Luz, lying on her side, propped up on a hand, gave her what had been previously described as 'finger guns'. "So you don't feel weird about chilling alone." 

"Oh wow," she said, stomach flipping. "Chilling. Together. Oh wow." She laughed sharply, snorted, covered her face, and groaned. "This is nice, but maybe you should focus on me." Wait! No! "On my notes! Focus on my notes!"

"If you say so," thankfully even Luz seemed to have realised that pushing her luck might end in Amity dying from being  _ too _ gay. "But I'll be here if you need me!"

Amity felt her sit up, and then felt the warmth of Luz's hand as she wrapped it around Amity's ankle again. She closed her eyes. It was fine. She didn't have to nap. This was fine. This was warm and comfortable. And she felt safe, which didn't mean she had to nap. She could absolutely stay up. Absolutely. Just because she felt warm and safe and comfortable for the first time in a while and was in a space where nobody asked anything of her or had any expectations that she had to live up to and nobody was threatening anything did not mean that she was going to-- and she was falling asleep. 

Oops.

When Amity woke up, Luz was still holding her ankle. "Hey," she said, when Amity began to resurface.

"Mmph," Amity managed, not quite put together yet.

"You were mumbling in your sleep kinda...a lot."

"Was I?" Hopefully nothing incriminating. Wait, could her thoughts even incriminate her now? Had she said weird stuff about Luz? Luz was basically her girlfriend... but, well. Some of the thoughts in her head were pretty mushy. She'd always been fascinated by romance. She should definitely hope the really cringe stuff hadn't gotten out. Once, she'd had an awkward dream about  _ Lillith _ that she'd talked in her sleep all through. Ed and Em had teased her for  _ weeks  _ after about getting good job kisses when she did well. Ugh. "Was it bad?"

"No…" Luz was frowning. "Yes? No? I don't know." That meant bad. Amity prepared herself as such, ready to flee. At least Luz already knew about the ear thing. Had it been the dream where she saved Luz from a dragon and then Luz saved her from a different dragon and they kissed on top of the multiple combined hoards of the two dead dragons? Or the one where they were both knights in a joust? Or that one where they were wandering witches on a quest to free the great owlbeast? Her face grew red hot again. Or one of the newer ones...where Luz renounced the human world and came to live forever with her in the Boiling Isles... 

Luz squeezed Amity's ankle, a gentle, reassuring pressure that brought her back. "Kind of. You seemed-- I don't know. Upset."

Amity ran her fingers through her hair, trying to recall her dream, hoping it wasn't one of the romance ones. The dream came back full throttle. Mom and dad standing over her. If they'd thought Willow was a bad influence, imagine what a human would do to her reputation. She was already moving downwards socially. How they were disappointed. How she needed to cut the human out or they would. The oblique threats. The fear.

She guarded herself with practice. Swallowing down the emotional response - her anger, her fear - replacing it with a blank expression. Her heart was thudding in her chest, but Luz wouldn't be able to hear that from here. Probably? Human anatomy was still a mystery, even though she was very quickly learning which spots made a certain human ticklish. She expelled all immediate signs of her panic from her face and lay back, lay still. "It's fine," she said. "Just a bad dream."

"You're so tense I feel like I'm squeezing a statue."

"I'm not tense," Amity replied, tensely.

Luz did the worst thing possible, which was to get closer. In fact, she lay on the beanbag next to Amity again, so close her breath skated against the skin of Amity's neck and sent a shiver down her spine. And then she did the next worst thing possible, which was to deduce what was wrong. "You haven't been sleeping super good lately, right?"

Amity looked at the far wall. Luz's hand found and squeezed hers. 

"It's okay. I can tell. You're still doing really good in class, you're just a little unfocused and even more stressed than usual. And you walked past our table twice at lunch all kinda dazed. And you keep dozing off now."

"It's warm in here!"

"And it's comfortable," Luz agreed. "You don't have to defend yourself."

"Anyone could doze off in here! And I'm not being defensive!" Amity said, defensively.

Luz did that thing she did. That upsetting human thing. She reached out to Amity with understanding, gently cupping her cheek in her hand and turning her head to face her and Amity immediately melted. "Wanna keep napping?" Luz asked, when she could have asked about absolutely anything, any of Amity's deepest secrets and gotten an answer. "I finished the notes, but I'll still be here. I can read! I can even keep touching you. You know, the hand on your ankle thing."

Unconsciously Amity drew her legs up, pressing her knees together and gulping. "That does sound...nice…"

"Right!" Luz said, brightly. "And then we can talk about whatever's bothering you."

"Nothing's bothering me!" Amity said, too quickly.

"Sure," Luz said with a soft smile. "Which is why you interrupted me doing homework earlier which you never do! Which was another clue something's up." Amity leaned up and kissed her, hoping to get Luz off the scent of that particular topic. Luz accepted this, kissing back in that very enthusiastic way of hers, before breaking away to say, "Okay, fine. I won't ask questions."

That usually meant Luz was going to sneak off on her own to find out. Welp. "Let me just...rest my eyes a little longer, okay?"

"That's what Eda says after five margarinebeers."

Amity's eyes blinked open. "Wait. What's a margarinebeer?"

"Wait, that's not a thing here?"

"Absolutely not, no."

"Oh noooooo."

Amity closed her eyes to the sound of Luz - " _ oh my god is this because of that butterbeer thing I told her about oh my gosh the cholesterol alone _ -" - and drifted off again, the weight of Luz's hand on her ankle a decent, warm reminder of where she was. 

She woke up for the second time a few hours later, knowing without checking that she'd slept way too late. There was no more sound of patrons outside the door of her hideaway, and her stomach told her she'd missed dinner. But Luz was still next to her. Her human had flopped down with her head next to Amity's feet, a hand wrapped around Amity's ankle, like she'd promised. Her own feet were next to Amity's face. Fondly, Amity pushed them away from her. 

"Hey Amity," came the response.

"I'm sorry. I guess I," she looked around. Her parents were already mad about hanging with a human. Staying out late would make that worse. "Overslept! I should really--"

"It's alright!" Luz tumbled off of their beanbag stack, spinning awkwardly around on her butt to rest her head on Amity's chest, effectively trapping her. "I already talked to Ed and Em. They're covering for you."

"What?" Wait. Oh no. "How did you contact the twins?"

Luz grinned sheepishly, and held up Amity's scroll. Amity slapped her hand to her face. She should've locked it! "You didn't….you didn't send them any photos of me, did you?"

Luz managed to look even more sheepish, which was a truly astounding feat. Amity groaned and unrolled her scroll and saw a Penstagram Group Chat open, featuring the usernames EBlight69 and Eblight420.

Oh no.

Feeling her stomach drop, Amity opened it to a view of a selfie. Luz holding the camera with one hand, herself fast asleep behind her. And the caption "Hi Ed and Em I don't know how this works but I have Amity and she's been asleep for a bit but I think she needs to stay asleep a bit more so I'm not going to wake her up can you cover for her please please please?"

This had been reacted to with several laughing emojis. The twins would never let her live this down.

Luz slid a hand around her waist, which was, in retrospect, the thing that kept her from exploding. "Anyway! They said they were going to keep your mom and dad off your trail, so you don't have to head back there."

Amity sank, mortified, into the beanbag chair. Luz picked her up and rested her on her lap, which was a very good way of knocking all of that despair straight out of Amity's head and replacing it with absolute dumbstruck yearning. Dammit. She was good at this whole  _ girlfriend (sort of) _ thing. Too good, Amity decided, as Luz gently brushed her lips over her forehead. Their mouths met, and then Luz was smiling at her, nose to nose, and Amity had completely forgotten why she was so mad. 

Her scroll vibrated with another notification in the group chat from EBlight69:  _ parents sleeping, drop off mittens any time. _

Another ding, this time a message from EBlight420:  _ or just keep her overnight ;) _

Oh yeah. That was why she was mad. 

Mustering everything in her, she folded her arms and stuck out her lower lips, eyebrows furrowed in her most extensive display of dignified anger. 

Another notification of a message from EBlight69:  _ I call maid-of-honor when you elope! _

EBlight420:  _ No way, Edric! That's mine! _

EBlight69:  _ I called it! _

Her face went very red, easily mimicking her most extensive display of undignified anger on top of that. Luz laughed nervously. Which was cute. But she was still mad! "Why would you get  _ them _ to help?"

"Because they love you," Luz offered with a nervous little grin.

"They're just--" Amity let out an exasperated noise. "They wouldn't get it!"

"Get what?" Luz was leaning in, and despite herself, Amity softened at the brightness of her eyes, the gentle facial expression. 

Amity thought about not saying anything anyway. Luz's hand moved, resting on her chest, right above her heart. She felt a knot inside start to undo. "They just-- they've always had each other," she mumbled finally. "So mom and dad never-- they never spent the same time interrogating all of their friends. They always had each other. They didn't need friends. Mom and dad...they never meddled with their friendships. They never...made them break things off."

"Like with Willow?" Luz asked, sympathetically.

"Yeah," Amity mumbled. "And...and with you."

"With  _ me _ ?" Luz sounded incredulous. 

"Yeah," she looked down. Luz was still holding her. Taking care of her. She didn't want to lose this. She tucked her head under Luz's chin. Luz smelled nice. Like she washed often. Which was good! And normal! But there was something else there too, which she couldn't quite put her finger on. That unmistakable something, the familiar nice smell, that was what usually set her heart pounding. Her fingers curled into fists in the fabric of Luz's shirt. "They've been really upset that I'm not hanging out with the friends they chose for me anymore."

It was a short sentence. But it felt larger than life, somehow. She closed her eyes, head resting against Luz. She didn't want to be their puppet, an extension of her mother and father's will. But through everything, even as she stood up for herself in more and more ways, she wasn't sure she was strong enough to see them harm Luz in their attempts to bring her back to their way of thinking. "They're not keeping me up or anything. I'm just…" 

She let the sentence hang, pressing her ear to Luz's chest, suddenly aware she could hear the gentle thud of her human heart. Her human's heart. Maybe her heart. One day? One day Luz might give her her heart. One day.

"Anxious?" Luz suggested.

Anxiety wasn't a word that Amity associated with herself. She was cool. Calm. Collected. And incredibly stressed about absolutely everything happening all the time always, except for what was happening in this room. But she hid that so easily. Which meant she was totally cool, calm, and collected, right? Not at all close to snapping.

"I guess." She felt a calming hand run its way up her bicep. "You know Ed and Em are absolutely going to use that photo you sent, right?"

"About that...Willow told me they printed it out and stuck it all over the school."

"WHAT?" Amity jumped up so fast that the top of her head slammed into Luz's nose. Luz fell back, holding her nose with both hands. "Oh no! Luz!"

"I'b awbight," her girlfriend (maybe?) answered, eyes squeezed shut in pain. She let go of her nose and it began streaming blood. Amity felt her adrenaline spike for what felt like the millionth time that day, and she patted her pockets uselessly, before remembering a stupid spell Em had taught her once when she'd been a kid with a cold and a runny nose; she drew a circle with her hand, dropped to her knees and pulled out a handkerchief from thin air. It was wet already, stained with the purple goop of an abomination. Best not to think about that, she thought as she pulled Luz's hand back from her nose and pressed the handkerchief to it. "Dis sbells bawd."

"What?"

Luz pressed the handkerchief to her nose, and gave a wincing smile at Amity. "It smells like abomination."

"I guess that's what I'm most used to making," Amity mumbled. She reached over and pushed Luz's hair back, the guilt hitting hard. Without thinking, head empty, she pressed her lips to where she'd smacked Luz's nose, and then leaned up on her knees to kiss Luz's forehead. "I'm sorry."

"It was an accident," Luz said, smiling bravely through the blood and watery eyes. She rested her hands on Amity's shoulders and Amity moved her hands to Luz's waist. "And it's okay. I was going to make sure you were okay and  _ then _ break into the school and take all the pictures down."

"What if you get into trouble?" Amity felt a pit in her stomach. First she was accidentally headbutting her, and now she was leading her towards expulsion. Why was it so hard to be a good okay-we-never-talked-about-it-but-we-kiss-so-probably-girlfriend?

"Eda broke into the school tons of times!" Luz said with her familiar misplaced confidence. She made pumping motions with her arms. "I bet I totally can!"

"I'm coming with you," Amity told her, the despair increasing. "You are not doing _that_ alone."

She leaned in, taking the other girl's hands in both of hers, and gently, gently, trying not to hurt Luz's poor nose further, kissed her. "If we were gonna have pics up all over school for tomorrow," Luz said, as they broke away, "I think I'd prefer them to be of us kissing."

Amity pulled her hood over her head. "No way, dork."

"Dork you  _ love _ ," Luz answered, with a wide grin as she leaned in close. "Dork you wanna  _ kiss _ . Dork you like more than Azura."

Amity had not used the word love to describe how she felt about Luz. But it seemed...sort of...maybe the correct word? She groaned, helping Luz to her feet, while Luz stuffed the handkerchief further up her nose to blot the blood. "Okay, more than Azura is  _ pushing _ it." Luz kissed her, and even with the taste of blood on her lips it was electrifying, amazing. Amity leaned into her, smiling. And felt calm start to take over again, blossoming in her chest. She gazed at Luz, cheeks going red, as Luz held her hand to lead her out of the library. "Thank you."

By the time she and Luz had reached the school, Amity's siblings had planned out an entire wedding. Amity kept looking in at the chat, hopeful they'd decided not to embarrass her, only to find details like " _ okay, so we put mittens on all of the tables _ " or " _ all of the groomsmen will wear green _ " or " _ fake human ears for all the guests! _ " that made her just roll up the scroll and ignore them, being careful to hide the whole thing from Luz. Luz kept holding her hand, which made that hard.

Some of the pictures of them had been pasted up pretty high on the walls. An abomination, grumbling, went to work on pulling those down, while she and Luz wandered the halls, taking pictures down, sliding them out from under lockers, picking them out from behind doors and windows, occasionally sneaking away from the lazy janitor demon that was patrolling. As they moved into the secret room that Luz had been shown by Viney in detention (which was pretty full of pictures,  _ thanks _ Ed and Em), Luz squeezed her hand and said, "Don't worry! This kinda thing happened at the human school I used to go to all the time. Someone would do something embarrassing and it would get spread all over. Even if we miss one or two -  _ which we won't! _ \- people will forget in a week. Maybe...two weeks? A month? A year at the most, Hermosa."

"That's a long time," Amity said, wearily, peeling a photo from the back of one of the secret doors. And then, because Luz had never told her about her human school before, she asked, "What kind of stuff do humans put in their lockers when incriminating photos aren't being taped on them?"

"You know," Luz thought about this, shrugging. "Celebrity photos, cute animal pics, books, stickers, snakes, sometimes pride flags, lizards, firecrackers, snacks, back-up snakes, back-up snacks, all the normal stuff."

All of that sounded familiar. Except for… "What's a pride flag?"

"Oh!" Luz was overly occupied in arranging the stack of photos of them she'd collected from around the school. Sorting them, neatening their edges, fiddling. "So, back on Earth, a lot of people aren't accepting of...you know. Who a person loves? So if a guy loves someone who isn't a girl, or a girl loves someone who isn't a guy, sometimes they get treated real bad for that. So...people started to make flags. For their identities. Like Gus's grudgby flags! They're to cheer themselves on. And to take pride in themselves. And their identity! And stuff." 

_ Take pride in themselves.  _ It felt like Luz had explained things a little simply. Like she'd probably left out complexities. Why wouldn't anyone be accepted for who they loved? Well, Amity mused, her parents would probably be upset at who  _ she _ loved, wouldn't they? A human. But... _ Take pride in themselves _ . Amity liked that phrase, the way it sounded. When Luz looked at her sideways, she looked at the floor. "So," she said, lost for what to say. "Do...you...have a flag? In your locker."

"Sure!" Luz seemed to have dropped a weight from around herself, her bright smile back. "I can draw it for you. I can draw them all for you, if you want!"

"Is...is yours the one for liking girls?"

"No, mine is for liking girls and guys. I ship myself with Azura  _ and _ Malin Gael, the mysterious soothsayer." Luz was not looking at her. It was deliberate, Amity was certain. "You too...right?"

Amity shook her head. "No," she said, quietly. She thought about how to put it.  _ I have never wanted to be with a boy the way I want to be with you. I have never wanted to plan my future with a boy the way I want to plan with you. _

The silence seemed to be affecting Luz, whose bottom lip was wobbling. "Maybe just," she cleared her throat. "Just Azura?" Unless there was a specific flag for people who liked humans. Or one specific human with beautiful brown skin, bright warm eyes, an unshakable attitude and the biggest smile in the world. Was there a flag for that? That  _ probably _ wasn't something that had a flag attached. Her human looked up and their eyes finally met again. There was relief in Luz's face. At first she couldn't think of why. Not until she rewound their conversation and realised- "Wait. Did you think I maybe... didn't like girls? Like...like  _ that _ ?"

Luz put up her hands, dropping the stack of pictures. "I got nervous!" She bent down to start picking them up. "I get super nervous. I just like you a lot."

"I keep kissing you!"

"You could have been trying to eat me!" Luz said with a laugh. "Everything here wants to scream at me or--" she went suddenly red. "Never mind! Not gonna finish that sentence!"

What an odd response. Why wouldn't she finish that sentence? Amity blinked at her, before picking up more of the papers. "You should," she started, awkwardly. "You should show me how to draw the flags. And then we can have flags. And put them in our lockers. And stuff."

The smile that suggestion received was almost blinding. Amity felt a stupid smile spread over her own face as she leaned in, her arm slowly resting on Luz's shoulder, gazing up at her. "I bet I can do better than that," she said, and Amity believed her, because it was  _ so easy _ to believe Luz whenever she said she could do anything. 

By the time they'd finished scanning the school for photos, it was almost time for school to start again, and too late for Luz to go all the way back to The Owl House for rest. They sat in the quad, Luz flopping against her shoulder. But Amity felt oddly enlivened, wide awake. She finally checked Penstagram again to see that Ed and Em had also apparently dozed off, and was able to magically wipe the chat of their wedding comments. Folding the scroll back up, she gazed up into the early morning sky, feeling her almost-definitely-girlfriend's body shift as she snoozed on her. 

Maybe it wouldn't have been so bad to show the world that photo.

Luz shook herself awake and did the 'finger guns' thing again as the first students began to arrive at the gates of the school. Amity clumsily did it back. And then she gently pulled Luz's hood up to cover both of them as she kissed her. "Have a good day at school," she said, and felt her mouth ache with the force of her smile. "I'll save a seat for you in Abomination class."

Her probably-but-we-haven't-talked-about-it-girlfriend touched her ears fondly, tracing the shape of the points. She thought about asking her to confirm it. To say,  _ yes Amity Blight, I am your girlfriend _ , but the stakes were too high. She felt too fragile for even the slightest hint of a negative response. So instead when Luz broke away to run to Gus and Willow who were rounding the corner, she sat and watched after her, ignoring the scream of the first bell, content only to watch her maybe-she-is-after-all-my-girlfriend's head bob through the crowd of other students, laughing and talking, a bright light visible from miles around.

In that moment Amity thought she could live through whatever her parents tried if it meant more nights, more days, with her very own bright spark in her life.


End file.
